Expert in the Field
by Professor Muscovite
Summary: Michael, hero of Orre, vanquisher of Cipher (for the second and apparently final time), grew up- and grew cynical and bored. He travels to Alola and finds good company in Guzma and Team Skull.
1. Prologue

Michael used to be bright and idealistic, once. How he ever managed that, in the blasted wasteland that is Orre, he wasn't sure.

He started his journey, more experienced in battle than most ten-year-olds, thanks to the virtual reality systems that were commonplace for the region- with no wild Pokémon to speak of, well, that was the only way for the common man to have any variety. Or had he just grown used to their presence, growing up in the region's lab?

Somehow, he thought Jovi's optimistic little shit attitude helped, or at least made him disinclined to think well of anyone else who was optimistic.

Still, when Professor Krane had been kidnapped, when Team Cipher re-emerged, Michael did what he had to. No one else was listening, no one else was doing anything. Adults never seemed to understand, did they? So he took action, he saved the Shadow Pokémon from their trainers, purified them.

And kept them.

It's not like he was going to build his team any other way, not here.

But battling wasn't ever Michael's passion, not really. It was a means to an end, though interesting specimens always caught his eye. And, well, maybe the snag machine that Michael swore he wore only for the aesthetic anymore, or maybe to be ready if Miror B. ever showed up again- maybe it had a little more use than he claimed.

The software and hardware both fascinated him, and so Michael ended up devoting his studies to understanding it, how to modify- which he did manage, what with turning off the misuse alarm trigger- but never quite understood it enough to produce his own, a new one, let alone a better one.

And no one wanted to hire the washed-up hero, who would both outshine them and be useless, simultaneously. Somehow.

The solution seemed simple: go someplace no one new his name. Somewhere far, and ideally, somewhere less dry and desolate.

Looking at the departures from Gateon Port, Michael noticed one destination in particular: Alola. That was about as different from Orre as one could get, wasn't it? So he was off, to brighter shores.

* * *

 **A/N: This was originally told in the second person, as a style experiment, but it was pointed out that's against 's comm guidelines. If anyone sees any stray "you"s that don't make sense as a general-you, please let me know! I'll keep updating/writing in 2nd person for the ao3 version, and changing it here, so this applies to all chapters from here on out.**

 **also, if ch3 looks like ch1 (or ch2 like the prologue, w/e) let me know- I should have correctly updated it now, I think, but takes a while to change things so idk for sure.**


	2. Chapter 1

Why does exeryone want to steal Pokémon so badly?

Well... Michael supposed he was pot calling kettle black, here. He tells everyone the Snag Machine on his arm is a prosthetic, which is only true in the most generous definition of the term, if at all. The fancy cables are just for show, he appreciated a science fiction aesthetic, nothing more.

In Orre, the focus on theft made sense- there were no spare Pokémon to go around, and their power in your pocket could make or break even the average businessman. Even there, though, stolen Pokémon had to be dealt with carefully, painstaking and incredibly illegal re-coding of Pokéballs necessary to prevent the storage system from recognizing the unregistered transfer- or hosting one's own storage server, and avoiding the Pokémon Centers outright.

Until Cipher created the first Snag Machine, of course.

Still, there were only two known functional snag machines in existence- and no one knew where Wes went. Some had claimed he pulled a Red and waited at the peak of Mount Battle, higher than the hundredth arena; some claimed he lived in the abandoned Under. Regardless, no trace was found.

Which left Michael with the only Snag Machine, which had even been legal, once. Oh, using it now for anything but Aura Detecting was incredibly illegal, and given Cipher's fall he hadn't seen any Shadow Pokémon for over ten years, now. But given its nature, the automatic severing of the link between Pokémon and its former ball, it's not like anyone but an eye-witness could very well prove anything.

So it seemed incredibly silly that these punks in front of him, these practical _children_ , were just demanding Michael to give up his Pokémon. They each only had one ball visible on their belts, but hadn't even reached for them. Did they really expect to not have to battle?

Michael sniffed a laugh. Given their folly, why not humor them? He'd caught a Yungoos, a Pokémon that wasn't native to the region but that he hadn't seen elsewhere, curious about it; but he hardly _cared_ for the thing, so gambling his ownership of it was hardly a risk at all.

When he handed the ball to the feminine grunt, he started to walk away - but she called after him. "Uh, hey! The rest of them too, loser!"

Michael turned around to look at the pair again, and raised an eyebrow. Umbreon was his oldest and strongest companion, but did lack the intimidation factor. Which was fine, being intimidating wasn't usually his style, anyway.

A devilish thought entered his mind... unfortunately, given most competitive battling stages banned the use of legendary Pokémon to put the occasional Region Savior and/or Chosen One on equal footing to average but skilled persons, he didn't tend to keep the Birds with him anymore, or even train them much. Damn.

Still, Salamence would do perfectly well, and the young thieves got the hint.

What kind of a criminal outfit was this Team Skull they claimed to be part of? How could they operate with such low standards?


	3. Chapter 2

The police officers handed Michael a Pokéball. "Michael Krane, is this the Pokémon that was stolen from you?" He touched the button, and a Yungoos materialized. Before handing it over, he'd spent maybe twenty minutes with the creature, so had no real way of knowing if this was the same one or not - but he assumed it was.

It grinned - or maybe it was just baring its teeth. It scrambled up Michael's pants and... didn't bite. It nuzzled, even. Why the hell it wanted to do that was beyond Michael, but it didn't hurt the faith he'd placed in the ID system.

"Oh, yes, _thank_ you, officers," he said, though his voice was a little scratchy from disuse. Big eyes and fond petting of the Yungoos completed the act, though, so he shouldn't need to ramble on or anything.

Perhaps that was the wrong tactic. He wasn't a child, anymore, and while his thin frame certainly wasn't hyper-masculine, it's not exactly feminine, either. On the other hand, it's not like he didn't come by it honestly - Professor Krane might not be his biological father, but he lived with the man long enough that Michael chose to take his name. Regardless, the police officers were giving Michael an odd look, hopefully of finding him odd rather than suspicious. He hadn't done anything illegal, so there was nothing to worry about, but still he tried to play his cards closer to the chest than that.

"Right, well, it's time to take these two in for processing-" said one of the officers, gesturing to the Team Skull grunts in handcuffs.

They were wide eyed, legitimately scared. Poor sods. "No, sir, no need for that," Michael said, voice as treacly sweet as he could manage. "With my precious Yungoos back to me, I don't see any need to press charges. I'm sure they've learned their lesson."

Of course, the lesson Michael hoped they'd learned was probably different than the one the officer would assume he'd meant.

The officer before Michael hesitated. "You're not required to, but it would help clean up the riff-raff to-"

"I said I _won't_ ," he replied, irritated. He'd been lucky enough not to be considered riff-raff himself at any point, at least within Orre. Outside of the region, even the esteemed Krane was barely considered an actual Pokémon Professor, wasn't considered worthy to have research funding put in to discover good Starter Pokémon candidates.

Not to mention that his own fields, mechanical engineering and programming, were only considered useful if you wanted to apply that to the Pokémon battling economy - which, mostly, Michael didn't. Hover vehicles that could last in non-wasteland conditions, actual working cybernetic prosthetics for people and non-battle (or retired) Pokémon... the only thing that had gotten him anywhere were the pointless applications for various mobile devices, and even those got maybe a few thousand downloads compared to the giants with tens and hundreds of millions.

So Michael bristled just a bit when these people - these _children_ were cast aside, were considered worthless without a chance.

Of course, he couldn't show that. Sympathy for Teams tended to garner suspicion, even if none he'd heard of seemed quite as destructive and power-hungry as Team Cipher. So for now, he just grinned wide, and let the officer mumble something apologetic.

It wasn't long before they were all outside of the police station.

The masculine grunt approached. "Uh... Thanks, I think."

The feminine grunt punched him in the shoulder. "Dude, don't say that, you sound like a wuss. And anyway, I think this shithead is playing some kinda fucked up game here, just ignore him."

The smile Michael gave her was a lot more sincere than the one in the station, but not particularly warm. He shot her finger guns and said, "If you're gonna steal Pokémon, you really need to try harder than that."


	4. Chapter 3

It was a hot day out, so Michael had elected to defer climbing Mount Hokulani for a while. He was starting to get interested in the Z-Moves that, for the time being, seemed to be unique to Alola, but hadn't felt like committing to being an official challenger. Still, it couldn't hurt to scope out these... 'Trial Sites' prior to, perhaps, someday, attempting them himself.

Not to mention, Alola's Storage System expert and resident maintenance guy seemed to spend most of his time there. Talking shop with him might be interesting. On the other hand, he might actually notice that Michael wasn't locally cleared for his interregional Pokémon, so perhaps that was a poor idea after all...

Michael paused for a moment, holding his ice cream cone away from himself - Blukberry flavored, he couldn't quite stomach vanilla after seeing the Vanillite line. The waffle cone at the bottom of this one was a dead giveaway that he wasn't eating an errant ice sprite, but the image never quite left his head.

Of course, it's not like he hadn't eaten other Pokémon. Once, there seemed to have been so-called "ordinary animals," dumber and less magical than Pokémon, but that was ancient history, and only conjecture. So of course he'd eaten Tauros Steak, and once even a Bouffalant Burger. He'd eaten Magikarp and Pidgey and Spoink and all the rest, since he left Orre. His home region itself had mostly canned goods, beans and soups and perhaps mystery-meat jerky. Even in the north of the region, at the borders where the wasteland dulled and near the oasis that was Agate, there wasn't nearly enough land for any kind of ranching. But all of that, the meat, the soup, the eggs, the milk- it was all processed. Biting into a Pokémon that might still be _alive_ left is stomach doing back flips. Berries tasted better, anyway.

All in all, it was a hot, slow day. Lazing in this peaceful garden, pretending he didn't notice Umbreon sneaking a lick or three of his ice cream. Hell, why not give him his own cone? So Michael went and paid for it, and his oldest friend was quite satisfied.

Quite suddenly, however, several Team Skull thugs entered the park, and started... generally menacing the population, Michael supposed. They crowded through the gate and spread out through the park - it had seemed like a lot at first, but once they split, it became clear there were only six of them, including the one with the odd uniform. So that must be one of the admins of this sad little operation.

One Team Skull girl poked Michael on the shoulder, and he looked up at her with vague disinterest. "Yo, you gotta check it! Get your ass outta here, or we're gonna wreck it!"

Michael felt like there was a better pun, somewhere, with 'your ass is grass,' but... eh. His forte had never been wordsmithing. Instead, he just took a long, slow lick of his ice cream, staring right back at her.

"Dude! I said-" then cut herself off. "That weird thing on your arm... You messed with us before? You're the guy, aren't you?"

He grinned up at her, then turn away to pet Umbreon.

Instead of backing down like Michael thought she would, she started yelling. "Boss, boss! I know it ain't what we're here for, but it's the asshole!" She then blanched and covered her mouth for a moment, before yelling again, "Uh, I mean the jerk!"

And that was Michael's cue to go. It was much too lazy of a day to be dealing with a crime syndicate, even if it was as pathetic as this one.

He nearly made it out of the garden before he was surrounded by grunts... and somehow, the Regional Professor for Alola, whatever his name was- Cuckoo? - and some green-haired kid. Poor sods. Not that this Team would do much to them, given the grunt's concern about shouting foul language. The kid-friendly evil organization. What a lark.

"Yo yo yo, it's mister Kukui!" _That_ was his name. Thanks, nameless Team Skull Grunt. "Another meathead we didn't ask for, but when we're done, you'll be runnin' after!"

A different grunt looked at the first one, and waggled a hand in the air. "Ehh, Damian, that's a slant rhyme at best. Aim higher'n that, bro."

Those two stood back a little from the group, apparently discussing the finer qualities of impromptu rapping. Well... that was something. In the meantime, a different Grunt said, "Yo, you gonna take us all on, you little shits?"

Kukui laughed in his face. "You gotta beat the man to be the man, son! There's-" He looked around and counted. ...Michael and the others were hardly surrounded anymore, actually. The child had already taken his chance to flee, smart kid. "Only three of you? Let's do this, Battle Royale style. I can take you all down in four turns!"

While Michael had been paying attention to the grunts around himself and trying to make his own exit, he hadn't noticed the the man approach over the bridge until he was nearly in the fray himself. "Battle Royale? Singles not exciting enough for you, you've gotta beat down three Pokémon at once? You're stealing my lines, kid!" This white-haired man- or at least, white-dyed hair, he could see roots showing through- pushed his way past a grunt (unnecessarily, there was plenty of room) to put himself in Kukui's face. "The hated boss who beats you down and beats you down, and never lets up-" The villain slapped a balled fist for emphasis each time he said the word 'beat', cracking his knuckles on the last few words. "Yeah, that's me. And you fuckin' know when big bad Guzma is here!"

At this point, Michael too intrigued to back away. Seriously, what kind of operation was this, that the administrators didn't even bother to mask their involvement with such illegal entities?

"And you!" Guzma turned his shouting towards Michael now. "I hear you've been makin' trouble for my kids?"

Michael tried to stifle a laugh. Well, a little, at least.

"You wanna see what destruction looks like, you little shit!?" Guzma shouted, too close to Michael's face for comfort. "Here it is, in human form- it's ya boy Guzma!"

He started to reach for a Pokéball, but Michael pre-empted him with a dismissive wave. "Nah," Michael said, and turned tail.

It took a moment, but he could hear behind him, "The fuck do you mean, 'nah,'? Come back here before I beat you down myself!"

Mciahel thought Kukui said something along the lines of, "...wonder why you never made captain?" At any rate, he seemed to have taken the challenge to battle himself.


End file.
